This could truly be debated , on both sides of the coin, forever. But, in the US, think Napster and all it caused, along with the strong possiblities of a lawsuit. They have even gone after 13 year old kids over it. It is so cheap these days, to join a music club of sorts and pay a small amount and download what you want, with no legal repucusions.

Stop finding ways to jsutify downloading it. Go to a store and STEAL it. its the same thing either way you are stealing it no matter what.

what im confused about is that they have adds saying "Get broadband now and enjoy fast downloads for all your favorite songs and movies"

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Edited by - vamp679 on 2/11/2005 5:33:29 PM

Edited by - vamp679 on 2/11/2005 5:34:20 PM

someone posted a link to somewhere that had an article where people did research on this. they said that most people who download music normally wouldn't go out to a store and buying it anyway. it's like being offered a trip to florida with all expenses paid, there's a small chance that the person wouldn't accept, but if you had to pay for everything, you probably wouldn't go.

There's only two problems with stealing it from a store: 1. less selection, 2. larger chance you are going to get caught.

Is it really stealing? Like I said, the $50 I spend on buying a set of one group's CDs could be instead go towards buying a ticket to that group's concert--and go into the artist's pockets instead of those of the capitalist bastards at the head of the record companies.

People were originally squeamish about playing records and tapes over the radio because of the same problem--that it was stealing the artists' music, that they were robbing the musicians of their money by not paying them to play live over the radio. FREE THE MUSIC!

Recording artists...are now condemned to a life of semi-luxury --South Park.

Thats honestly one of the worsts excuses I have ever heard. HAve many songs have you downloaded vs how many concerts have you been too?

A site to compare downloading of music.
Even sites that offer unlimited downloads.

Always remeber, that if you have a job/business, you want to be paid for what you do. They do too.

Actually, there was a study done which showed that people downloading music actually increased sales. Here's the link.

hehe - figures reflect reality for me personally.........
AOL offers broadband at decent speeds - with the tag of downloading music. They have their own download centre - with "gigs at AOL" (think MTV unplugged but without audience - its good). You can also listen to tracks too (like live streaming of your choice of song). However, you cannot download the actual tune and save it to your HDD at all.........

Since downloads began, record sales have plummeted in the UK. It used to take an average sale of 100,000 copies to get to the Number 1 spot, and million selling singles could actually occur (baby one more time sold nearly 2mil over here).
The last I heard, a really bad track not only made it to number one, it also got back to number one after a few weeks......because it sold a mere 21,000 copies that week. When you used to have to sell that many to crack the top twenty, its pretty obvious downloading has had an impact....

The arguement that you may go see their shows is not a good one either. 90% of people whom own an album or single by an artist have never seen the artist in concert - and never will. Remember most buyers are probabily under 18 as well. The album sales haven't been as badly affected by downloads as singles sales, and lets face it - you don't buy a single and go see a band live..
The problem for me is that music is so overpriced that I rarely buy anything (no - I don't download it either - most music these days is terrible!). If the price was lowered so that the profits weren't quite so high, and concentration on quality instead of paying fortunes to promote absolute rubbish instead, would mean the production costs could be lower.

Like it has already been mentioned, the concerts are where the money is at though. Prince was the top earning performer of last year according to Rolling Stone Magazine, taking home around $43 million dollars - this is all due to a tour (which I didn't even know about ) - closely followed by Madonna. Seems like Single/Album sales don't really earn much apart from people going to concerts - so the first post in this thread COULD be very true.....but to really get a closer look, you would have to compare values across the board. How much single sales used to make, how much extra royalties from world wide radio airplay due to your single being high in the charts, how much albums used to make in average sales - as well as concerts.........then compare it all to modern day, and see what effect the downloads have had. I used to believe the press saying downloads haven't really had any effect at all - but since these days any old tripe can get to Number 1 with 20,000+ sales instead of the old 80,000+ sales - it obviously HAS had an impact.....otherwise why would the companies care?

Because they're capitalists and materialists.

*blah blah blah socialist/communist rant blah blah blah*

You might be justified in downloading music if you sent the artists themselves some sort of compensation for the time and effort they put in to making something you enjoy. Just remember, they're the ones doing you a favour by releasing the music at all. They have every right to expect some sort of payment. I can understand your dissatisfaction with record companies and the like, but you're not "freeing the music", you're just engaging in petty theft.

...and that was where my point about Live performances comes in. I pay for a ticket, thus putting much more cash into the artists' pockets than any of the royalties they get off of paid downloading services or CD purchasing.

And doesn't this strike you as odd: Each CD costs under a cent to make, the royalties an artist gets off each CD sale is about 1c/$1--and yet record companies somehow justify pricing the CDs at 20 bucks apiece. And most of that isn't going into the paychecks of the company employees, but rather its executives. Maybe if they shortened their paychecks a bit and cut back sale prices this problem wouldn't exist in the first place.

I already agreed about the recording companies. They generally suck. That's not the point. When you download music you pay nothing for something someone else had sunk - presumably - a lot of time into. Going to a concert doesn't change this. Of course you have to pay for a concert. They have costs too, you know. Stages, lights, sound equipment, security, all of these things cost money and are factored into the ticket cost. If the artists make music freely available, that's one thing. Stealing music that they wish to be compensated for is quite another.

Really, if you don't pay for each song or album you download you're no better than the corporate entities you profess to be so opposed to. In fact, you're worse. You're exploiting the artists and not giving anything back.

Waht you are forgetting is contracts. they arent supposed to really get paid per disk they get paid all upfront for signing with a record company. By stealling music you make the record company get less money for taht artist and you in turn screw up his profit because he doesnt get a big contrac in teh following years.